Because all of you need more things to look at when you’re not visiting this web-log:
- Fr. Francois Laisney, “Did Vatican II Contradict Traditional Catholic Doctrine on Religious Freedom?,” Angelus Press Blog – Will the debate on religious liberty ever end? That’s not to say I think it should end. Until Rome, at some distant point in the future, deliveries greater clarity on how Dignitatis Humanae and post-Conciliar praxis squares with tradition, faithful sons of the Church will continue to question whether a “hermeneutic of continuity” exists, and how it is to be understood. Fr. Laisney’s latest contribution to the discussion is, in fact, a continuation of a debate with Fr. Brian Harrison that began in The Remnant. Read it, ponder it, and then try to avoid getting into an online fisticuffs later on.
- Chris Jackson, “Francis to Beatify ‘Jimmy Carter of Popes’ at Close of Synod?,” Fetzen Fliegen – We all knew this was coming. Pope Paul VI is on the fast-track to sainthood thanks in no small part to the “Canonize the Council” mentality which has emerged in the Church over the last several years. Some argue that the close of the upcoming (and worrying) “Synod on the Family” is an appropriate time to beatify “The Pope of Humanae Vitae.” Maybe. If the beatification is a sign that our current Sovereign Pontiff intends to maintain continuity with his predecessor’s heroic and Spirit-directed stand against contraception and the sanctity of marriage, then I suppose this, too, can be endured.
- Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig, “Catholicism and Libertarianism Clash Over Property and the Common Good,” National Catholic Reporter – Quoting libertarians back to themselves is the surest way to get their heads steaming, which is why I am delighted to see ESB do it here. Linking Catholic Social Teaching back to its Patristic roots in Ss. John Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine is also a very good thing, though perhaps a bit more could be said about the modern social magisterium that began with Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. While the libertarians love to apply a “hermeneutic of selectivity” to that magisterial text, they have a far more difficult time doing so to its progeny, Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno. The more that can be written on that document, the better.
